Bathroom Workbook: 8 Elements of Beachy Style
Most people have a positive association with the beach, whether it came from a single family vacation long ago or comes from a wave-crashing view that greets you every morning. Either way, it’s a good feeling to evoke in your home.
Bathrooms in particular are good spaces in which to inject a nod to the beach. Water; durable, natural materials; a sense of travel and casualness — all elements linked to a sandy-shore lifestyle — form a solid combination for a welcoming bathroom.
Here are eight elements that will help you get the style in your home.
1. A sense of place. First, decide which beach will be your inspiration. The beaches of New England are way different than the ones in Florida, in the Caribbean or up and down California’s coast. “There are beaches that are rocky and moody with huge surf and dark brown sand, or ones with light sand with light blue water,” says Shannon Ggem, an interior designer in Malibu, California. “Some beaches are very green with reeds and dark gray water and taupe-y sand.”
Look at photos of the beach you have in mind and note the color of the water, sand and surrounding vegetation, and the moodiness of the climate. Then determine what natural elements are present. Are there rocks? Shells? Dunes? Lots of driftwood? Wooden piers and fences? Seaweed? Also try to get a good sense of the culture of the beach. Is it all swim trunks and surfboards? Or is it windbreakers and campfires? Ggem suggests looking at historical buildings in the area of the beach you choose, too. “You can tour a historical sea captain’s mansion in New England for $6 and walk away with a pocketful of details,” she says.
All this will help inform your (and your designer’s, if you will be using one) choices of colors, materials and accessories.
For inspiration in this particular project, Ggem’s client was thinking not only of a very specific beach in Santa Barbara, California, but a specific time period too.
“She was thinking of vintage Santa Barbara, a time from before she was born,” Ggem says. “So I pulled vintage advertisements from Catalina and Santa Barbara to see how they sold beaches as fun, wide and sandy. So that’s how this bathroom ended up.”
2. Durable finishes and a sense of service. A fully tiled wall gives the space a beach-changing-room vibe, which hits on a number of related elements. “Beach bathrooms need a service feel,” she says. “They’re hardy and easy to maintain.”
Ggem likes to use fake wood tile (seen here) in her beach-themed bathrooms, because actually being near the beach means the inevitable presence of sand inside her clients’ homes.
“Sand will scratch the crap out of wood floors,” she says. “So the long-plank fake-wood tile has been a godsend.”
Durable finishes lend a sense of casualness, which is also largely associated with beach lifestyles.
She also pulls color from driftwood, as seen here in a New York bathroom she designed. “It’s a wood color but with a grayer tone, just like wood left on the beach to gray naturally,” she says. Thevariegated glass tiles, meanwhile, feel like the “undulation of waves in water,” she says.
If you’re still stuck on figuring out a color palette, Ggem recommends starting with sea glass — shards of broken glass rounded and frosted over time. It includes many muted blues and greens.
4. Unpolished finishes. Just like sea glass has that timeworn frosted quality to it, so should finishes in a beach-theme bathroom. “Nothing high gloss or slick,” Kolb says. This means shiny chrome finishes are out, and satin and matte ones are in.
More Elements of Beachy Style Bathroom
Bathroom Workbook: 8 Elements of Beachy Style
